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\r\nEnough talk; more action needed

On 2nd March 2015, the New Vision published a photo of women collecting polythene bags from a filthy Nakivubo channel. The bags when collected are sold to food vendors who use them to cover the food they sell to the public. Uganda is currently suffering an outbreak of typhoid that left 2 people dead and more than 100 others admitted in different hospitals. Such practices are one of the causes of the increased typhoid cases.

In 2012, the High Court declared that polythene/plastic bags violate the right of the citizens of Uganda to a clean and healthy environment and ordered that the drafting of the bill (seeking the regulation and use of all plastics less than 100 microns) be expeditiously done to protect the environment from any further harm and damage already caused by these bags.

This was a decade after Greenwatch filed a suit against National Environmental Management Authority and the Attorney General seeking a ban on the manufacture, use, distribution and sale of plastic bags and containers of less than 100 microns thick. To date, none of this has happened.

The Ministry of Environment has created excuses for the last 15 years concerning the ban of polythene bags. As long as policy makers remain adamant, diseases like typhoid will continue to raid Ugandans and our environment will slowly and steadily be destroyed. The ministry should desist from making empty promises and implement the ban of the deadly polythene bags and protect people's health and the environment.